Abnormal Psychology
"You want me to what?" squeaked Sakura as she looked up from the thick medical folder Shizune had just handed her.
The brown-haired woman took a deep breath and slowly repeated herself.
"Sakura," she began in her most authoritative tone. "We're in the process of reevaluating the mental states of all Konoha shinobi. Tsunade-sama has made this a top-priority medic project, and she wants all studies to be done over the next few months and without the subjects' knowledge."
The girl waved her hand quickly as if shooing away a fly.
"I'm well aware of that. I'm just asking if you'd given me this subject by mistake," replied Sakura as she held up the file for Shizune to see.
"No mistake, I'm afraid," was the other woman's response.
"But, this assignment most definitely compromises the objectivity of the study! There's no way I can evaluate him in particular without tainting my research with personal opinion built over the course of our relationship!"
Shizune sighed. She had expected this much from Sakura, the girl who took her work so seriously that the mere suggestion of breaching medical ethics would send her running for the hills.
"You know as well as anyone that Kakashi is a notoriously difficult individual to follow. You don't think he'd be just a little bit suspicious if some undercover medic were to approach him everyday and try to strike up conversation?"
Sakura's facial expression did not signal that she was convinced.
"Yes, I'm sure he would be, but don't you think he'd also be suspicious if I followed him around everyday going 'Hey, Kakashi! Heard any voices in your head today? Nope? Okay! Killed anyone just for pleasure and not for the job? Yeah? Tons?'"
A small smile graced Shizune's lips, and for a moment Sakura thought she might have won her case.
"You're also a top Konoha kunoichi, Sakura. I trust you can be a little more discreet than that. Take it up with Tsunade-sama if you really want to, but I doubt she'll be any more lenient."
Sakura looked around the room as if pleading for someone else to step forward and absolve her of her latest responsibility, but the girl knew she had lost the argument.
"Good, now that that's settled, you have my permission to begin immediately. This will be your project for the next few months. We'll put you on whatever missions Kakashi is sent on, so you can evaluate him while he's in action, but we'd really prefer you get as much as you can about his daily life, you know, how he interacts with civilians and whether he's holding up alright living the way he does."
Sakura nodded slowly, feeling particularly defeated, and she opened the folder as she turned leave.
The papers were truly comprehensive. She would have to find out everything from how he took his meals to whether or not he had a gambling problem. She couldn't even begin to think of how she was going to gather all this information short of doing something as extreme as moving into his home and spending every waking moment interrogating him.
'Like that'll happen,' she thought darkly.
In the twelve years that she'd known Kakashi, Sakura had never once been to his apartment let alone spent an extended amount of time with him. In fact, the closest she'd ever been to having a private moment with him had been on a C-class mission ten years ago. She had broken her ankle in a skirmish, and he'd carried her twenty kilometers to the nearest clinic where she got her bone set. She had spent the entire trek crying and apologizing for how bad of a ninja she made. In retrospect, he hadn't contradicted her.
Bastard, Sakura mused in her head, half-offended and half-amused as the memory came back to her in vivid detail.
Sakura looked at the thick stack of papers again. She would have to go through everything one by one, and the experience of doing so would probably be the most frustrating thing she'd ever done.
- - - -
A few days later Sakura realized that the task would not actually be all that frustrating, no, it would be absolutely and unquestionably infuriating.
The day after receiving her assignment, she had run into Kakashi at her favorite bookstore. She'd been browsing magazines when she spotted a familiar head of silver hair a couple of bookshelves down. She had approached him in a manner she believed to be quite stealthy, and little to her surprise, he appeared quite engrossed with the books in the section marked "adult."
She had furrowed her brow in response to how blatantly he wore his porn addiction on his sleeve, and she made a mental note to try and tap into the psychological underpinnings that drove his seemingly insatiable appetite for smut.
" You know, Sakura, I don't mind you looking at adult novels with me. You don't have to hide behind that bookcase waiting for me to leave because I'll be here quite a while."
He hadn't made any motion of looking at her while he spoke as his eyes did not travel away from the lines of text that Sakura suspected strung together to make quite a salacious scene in his dirty old mind.
She'd cursed herself all the way home for letting him catch her like that, and what was worse, she had only freed herself from the situation by pretending she was indeed there to buy trashy porn books. The fifteen awkward minutes he'd spent happily telling her which books were good and which weren't nearly killed her.
The days following sped by in similar fashions. Every opportunity Sakura got, she took with zeal, but most of them ended abruptly with awkward run-ins and much stammering on her part. So far the only semi-useful evidence she'd accumulated involved how many boxes of tofu Kakashi bought when he grocery shopped—far too many boxes by Sakura's standards—and how he interacted uncharacteristically gently with Asuma's child when he went to visit Kurenai. Sakura had only managed to stumble upon that particular scene because she'd been playing shougi with Shikamaru on Kurenai's front porch that very day.
She knew that Tsunade would be displeased with her results, and her prediction came true the next day when she went to file her first week's findings.
"He eats a lot of tofu, and he is quite fond of the Sarutobi child?" Tsunade questioned as her arched eyebrow appeared over the folder, which was empty save for the single piece of paper detailing Sakura's scant research.
"Shishou, I just can't get close to him. I've tried tracking him and following his movements, but . . ."
"he finds you before you get anything useful?" Tsunade finished, amusement on her voice.
Sakura nodded, and she bit her lower lip in frustration as she averted her eyes from her master's steady gaze.
"I'm afraid this won't do, Sakura," Tsunade clucked. "Kakashi is one of our top shinobi, and his idiosyncratic behavior needs to be analyzed."
"Oh come off it shishou," Sakura finally spoke up. "We all know Kakashi. He's just, well, he's just Kakashi! There's nothing harmful about that."
Tsunade shook her head.
"There have been a series of suicides among the elite in the Sand and in the Mist. Neither of those countries has a proficient psychological monitoring program for its shinobi, and to be perfectly honest, nor does the Leaf."
Sakura looked down and shuffled her feet, at a loss for what to say.
"In times of protracted peace, a lot of elite shinobi get restless. This restlessness is prime breeding ground for damage, whether external or internal. Do you really think it's such a coincidence that defection from villages is highest when there isn't a war? Besides Kakashi's family has a history of . . ."
Sakura's head snapped upwards to look at Tsunade as the woman suddenly cut herself off. A moment of silence passed between them as Sakura waited to see if her shishou would finish her sentence.
"Okay, I'll help you along, Sakura. You know how important it is to me that Kakashi gets a proper and thorough evaluation. Why don't you disappear for a few weeks, go stay with your mother, she lives outside of town now, right? You could also go up north and finish that study you were doing on Astralagus root. "
"Erm," Sakura replied, disappointment in her voice. "How will that help the situation?"
"Don't worry about it," Tsunade answered as a cryptic smile grazed her face.
- - - -
The girl spent her first week and a half away in solitary research on her medicinal plant. While she always found field research fulfilling and cathartic, going to sleep every night in a one-person tent caused her quite a bit of loneliness and discomfort, and often times she would lie awake fretting over what Tsunade had in store for her. By the beginning of the second week she found her way back towards the outskirts of Konoha and to her surprise was fairly excited for her mother's company.
Save for the older woman's constant nagging about her relationship status, the kunoichi found the visit to be quite relaxing, and she passed the next few weeks without much incident. She cooked dinner with her mother every night, and she helped the older woman tend to her garden during the day. On the last day of her third week at her mother's house, Sakura was sitting at the breakfast table nursing a cup of coffee when a small sparrow landed on the window ledge and proceeded to scratch at the glass.
"Don't do that," Sakura muttered to herself as she rushed towards the window. "Mother will just die if you get scratch marks on the window."
She undid the note from the small bird's leg, and it hastily flew away, affronted by the girl's admonishment.
Return to your apartment. Things should be easier now
Confused by the message, Sakura quickly packed her things and left her mother a goodbye note on the breakfast table.
It took Sakura half an hour to walk back to town, as she was in no hurry to see what Tsunade had finally cooked up. When she finally reached her apartment, she was surprised to see a simple note taped to the front door. Carefully tearing it off, she unfolded it to find a short letter.
Sakura,
Since you couldn't reach Kakashi, I thought I would bring him to you. If anyone asks, you've been away for a month on an A-rank mission doing some information gathering on a particularly threatening group of rogues in the south. Unfortunately, you blew your cover, and while they threatened revenge, they never quite found out who you were. You are going to be a "prime target" for the next few months, and Kakashi has been assigned to guard you in case they do find your whereabouts. He will be staying with you at all times, so take this opportunity to collect as much information as you can. Don't blow it.
Sakura cursed so loudly that her neighbor popped his head out the window and gave her a disapproving glare.
"Problem, Sakura?"
She nearly jumped out of her skin at the sound of his voice. She then crumpled the paper so tightly in her fist that she was sure her palm would have paper cuts on five different places. He looked on with amusement and stood waiting for her to say something.
She quickly scanned him up and down. He was wearing his usual outfit minus the vest, and he had a large duffel bag slung over his shoulder. As usual, his expression was unreadable beneath his mask, and as he slouched against the outside wall of her apartment, he kept his gaze on her, expecting a response.
"It's nothing, sensei," she replied a tad too quickly, and she hastily opened the door to allow the both of them inside.
- - - -
Kakashi could tell that his sudden appearance on her doorstep had rattled the girl. He made no note of it to her, however, since he imagined that she was rather upset about the entire situation. Still, Kakashi found himself quite disappointed in Sakura. He had never really known her to botch a job since she'd become the fifth's apprentice, and messing up so badly that she needed a bodyguard was something Kakashi could hardly tolerate out of his own pupil. Worst of all, despite the fact that Tsunade had given him the assignment as a B-class mission, he had refused payment and had instead taken the job out of nothing but complete concern for Sakura's safety.
She would at least have to feed him while he was there.
He entered her apartment slowly, taking deliberate steps to avoid giving her the impression that he was intruding. Quickly taking in the immaculate surroundings, Kakashi came to the realization that he had never seen her home.
It was just what he would have expected out of Sakura. The apartment was small, tidy and gave new meaning to the word cozy. He'd always harbored his suspicions that she would decorate with a minute proclivity towards the color pink, and he was not wrong. In her small living room pink throw pillows adorned the couch, and curtains of the faintest strawberry blocked out the offending sun.
"Erm," Kakashi coughed, "where should I put my things?"
"Um, I guess on the couch?" Sakura laughed nervously. "I apologize for not having an extra bedroom. I guess with all this messing up on missions I'm never going to be able to afford a bigger apartment."
The last sentence she finished with a lopsided smile, and Kakashi eyed her warily. It was a little soon for her to be mocking herself, wasn't it?
"Actually, Tsunade instructed me to never let you out of my sight."
He spoke the last words carefully, as if testing the waters, and never once did his gaze leave her face for fear of missing her reaction.
For a few moments she said nothing, and then her face fell.
"Kakashi-sensei, please, I may be a target, but I'm not a civilian. I'm sure it won't be that big of a deal if you sleep on the couch!" Sakura whined, exasperation rife in her voice.
He shook his head and let out a low laugh muffled by the mask.
"Orders, Sakura."
"Oh screw orders. You can't honestly sleep in the same room with me for a month?"
He made no motion to respond. She took that to mean 'Yes, I can, actually.'
Sakura sighed, defeated. Tsunade really did want her to get as much out of him as possible.
"Fine," she gave in. "You can put your things in my room. It will be easier for you to get to the bathroom from there anyways, but you're sleeping on the floor!"
Kakashi smiled.
"Is that anyway to treat a guest, Sakura?"
"You are too difficult," Sakura ground out, making sure to enunciate every word so he would grasp the full magnitude of her frustration.
He only gave her a short laugh as he shuffled towards her bedroom to put down his things.
- - - -
"So . . ." Kakashi began, dragging out the word so Sakura could realize its full potential.
They were sitting at the small table by her kitchen, eating ramen out of Styrofoam cups the way Naruto used to when he was younger. Sakura kept her eyes on her food, too unhappy to bother striking up conversation. She stole a furtive glance upwards, and frowned at what she saw. Kakashi still had his mask on, and he seemed utterly engrossed in dragging the noodles as far into the air with his chopsticks as possible.
He caught her watching, and he smiled.
"It cools the noodles off."
She gave no audible response.
"So . . ." he began again. "How did this happen, Sakura?"
"How did what happen?" She ground back.
"Oh, you know, screwing up so badly you need a 24/7 bodyguard."
Sakura's eyes narrowed. She hated it when Kakashi's reprimand came in the form of flippant mockery. It didn't help matters that she actually hadn't done anything wrong. She made a mental note to begrudge Tsunade for this.
"I . . . I don't want to talk about it." Sakura stuttered out, trying her best to sound as victimized as possible.
There was a brief pause. Kakashi began twirling the noodles in the air and gathering them into a small ball like yarn on a stick. Just as Sakura believed she had dodged this bullet, he said in a soft voice of dead calm.
"Did you really do it?"
"Do what?" she shot back.
"Did you really give into some childish infatuation and sleep with one of the rogues?"
Oh she was going to do way more than begrudge Tsunade.